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CERT* Vendor-Initiated Bulletin VB-97.16
December 17, 1997
Topic: CrackLib
Source: Alec Muffett
To aid in the wide distribution of essential security information, the
CERT Coordination Center is forwarding the following information from
Alec Muffett. He urges you to act on this information as soon as
possible. If you have any questions or need further information,
please contact Alec directly or your vendor.
Copies of cracklib26_small.tgz and cracklib26_small.diff have also
been archived at ftp://ftp.cert.org/pub/tools/cracklib/
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Topic: CrackLib
Source: Alec Muffett
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Problem: Vulnerability in CrackLib v2.5
I. Description
CrackLib is a freely-available software library that provides
systems and application programmers with some control to dissuade
users from utilising easily-guessable passwords as authentication
tokens.
A weakness in a published version of CrackLib (v2.5, dated 1993)
may be open to exploitation on Unix systems utilising CrackLib in
setuid-root software, leading to compromise of system privileges.
II. Impact
A bug in CrackLib v2.5 *may* be exploitable to obtain root
privileges when logged on machines where CrackLib is installed as
part of a SUID program, such as "/bin/passwd".
This problem will also impact systems where CrackLib is part of
the PAM (pluggable authentication module) installation; where you
are using a commercial operating system that utilises CrackLib
(typically this applies to some Linux and FreeBSD distributions)
you are advised to contact your vendor for a patch.
III. Solution
A upgraded/fixed version of CrackLib - v2.6 - is available from
the following website, together with patches for the v2.5 software:
http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~crypto/
MD5-signatures filenames
-------------- ---------
7181205d70afcf75bb2240678b6be855 cracklib26_small.tgz
247ad535f3e84bf586f7c31197ad1774 cracklib26_small.tgz.asc
3933d0b56695f38535a5be3b57ccb60f cracklib26_small.diff
ec0e3714bc95ab2f2352a4438de17e7c cracklib26_small.diff.asc
...and contact information is also available from that website.
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If you believe that your system has been compromised, contact the CERT
Coordination Center or your representative in the Forum of Incident Response
and Security Teams (FIRST). See http://www.first.org/team-info/.
We strongly urge you to encrypt any sensitive information you send by email.
The CERT Coordination Center can support a shared DES key and PGP. Contact
the CERT staff for more information.
Location of CERT PGP key
ftp://ftp.cert.org/pub/CERT_PGP.key
CERT Contact Information
- ------------------------
Email cert@cert.org
Phone +1 412-268-7090 (24-hour hotline)
CERT personnel answer 8:30-5:00 p.m. EST
(GMT-5)/EDT(GMT-4), and are on call for
emergencies during other hours.
Fax +1 412-268-6989
Postal address
CERT Coordination Center
Software Engineering Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh PA 15213-3890
USA
CERT publications, information about FIRST representatives, and other
security-related information are available from
http://www.cert.org/
ftp://ftp.cert.org/pub/
CERT advisories and bulletins are also posted on the USENET newsgroup
comp.security.announce
To be added to our mailing list for CERT advisories and bulletins, send your
email address to
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In the subject line, type
SUBSCRIBE your-email-address
* Registered U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
The CERT Coordination Center is part of the Software Engineering
Institute (SEI). The SEI is sponsored by the U. S. Department of Defense.
This file: ftp://ftp.cert.org/pub/cert_bulletins/VB-97.16.CrackLib
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